What Trump’s Win Means For the World

Trump’s win is a triumph of “America first” over “American supremacy.” While these two things may sound almost the same, they’re not. America first simply means that American interests overrule all others, and also overrule any sense of morality. American supremacy is a bit different. Quite simply, being supreme is of vital importance and overrules everything else, and I mean everything else.

So the guy who believes in America first says, “It is okay and actually good to fight a war to lower the cost of bread.” The guy who believes in American supremacy says, “I want to continue ruling the entire world forever, even if I can’t afford bread.”

The implication here is obvious. The guy who believes in America first can be negotiated with. The American supremacist cannot be negotiated with, only defeated.

Republicans emerged from the Cold War as American supremacists. Even when Americans could not afford bread, Republicans were indifferent to such whining peasants, because their only goal was supremacy. And even at the grassroots level, the American public believed in American supremacy, and were fine with not being able to afford bread. But in the end, Republicans were boring to the American supremacist movement. Republican policy can be summed up as tax cuts for the rich, forever wars, and unconditional support for Israel. That’s boring, and the supremacists in the ruling elite had more appetite.

Under Obama, a massive shift happened. Democrats became the new forever war American supremacy party. But unlike Republicans, they offered a far more ambitious vision of power. This vision was so exciting, it captivated not just American elites, but elites around the world, particularly in Europe. A true “rules based international order,” under which all of humanity lives as slaves with no rights or freedoms, every aspect of their miserable lives controlled by the ruling technocrats.

15-minute cities, eating bugs, social credit scores, abject poverty for the masses, and total censorship of every platform — this is what western politicians mean when they speak of the “rules based international order.”

As powerful as these people were, they just proved to not be terribly competent. They’re also extremely arrogant and constantly overestimate their abilities. All these traits were on display in the US elections this week.

Trump represents, or at least says he represent, the peasants whining that they cannot afford bread. The angry peasants got him elected in 2016, but that wasn’t enough. He was immediately isolated and then pushed out.

He came back because a certain element of the ownership class value what he says and consider it a better alternative to Democrats. There are two very broad categories of capitalists in the USA. One segment, in general the lower segment, are the industrialists in the rust belt. The type of guys who are millionaires, but still go to the local sports bar on Friday night in their greasy work clothes.

The other segment, the upper segment usually, are the white collar coastal liberals who think it is possible to have an economy that doesn’t produce anything, is built entirely around the service industry, and we are prosperous from selling shitcoin and AI to each other. It was easy to convince these people to be supremacists because all of their beliefs were pretty stupid to begin with.

So what does that mean for the wars and American foreign policy in general? Well, only about 5% of voters in the 2024 election cycle considered foreign policy an important issue. That’s both a good and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because the vast majority of Americans aren’t fanatically committed to the idea of waging war no matter what and at any expense. It is is a bad thing because there is no compelling motivation to stop the wars either, and morality has not entered the chat. No one is upset that Russians are being killed by American weapons, and no one is upset about Ukrainians being kidnapped off the street and pushed into suicide attacks with American weapons in their hands.

Bottom line, Trumpists aim to revitalize American industry. If a particular war hinders this goal, they will likely end it. But if a war enables that goal in some way, then they will probably enthusiastically support that war, or at least not oppose it.

I might go so far as to say that Russia and Iran played their cards better than China. Russians jumped into a war, which shows that there are red lines that cannot be crossed without violence. That’s the reality of the situation the Trump team is going to have to take extremely serious. Iran didn’t quite go that far (and understandably why, as they’re much weaker), but still proved they will respond proportionally to provocations and attacks. But China has been passive.

Conventional wisdom says the USA could hypothetically outmaneuver and out-muscle Russia or China, but not both at once. Since Trump seems hellbent on a trade war with China, it seems to be almost mandatory for him to kiss and make up with Russia. That’s my theory at least.

Ian Kummer

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